Online Blogintegrity

...it looks like the Internet stalker and his Vulcan pal who launcheda crusade against KSFO and my co-hosts have some interesting buddies -- Al Jazeera.

See for yourself. Click here

Our new friend FGFM posts this video on the YouTube, with

Fair Use commentary on the San Francisco Thousand Watt Circle Jerk©. If you listen closely, you’ll hear Melanie Morgan cite a recent Gallup poll, which states (paraphrasing – listen to the audio) “over 80% of Americans believe that anyone in the media who exposes state secrets in a time of war - and that's what this is, a time of war - should be tried for treason... and that's a Gallup poll!" Wow! That’s pretty damning, and quite the defense of KSFO’s calls for the execution of NY Times editor, Bill Keller.

Well, it would be if the poll actually existed. I spent some time digging around, going so far as to sit through a commercial at the GallupPoll.com site so I could access some of their info., and I didn’t find any such poll. The only Gallup polls I could find that dealt with treason were from 1953, 1978, 1981, 2001 and 2002 (re: John Lindh Walker). [cite]

I even checked at PollingReport.com, a polling aggregator site, and came up empty when checking other polls (in case it wasn’t Gallup). Nothing on the Google re: “Gallup + treason” or “Gallup + treason + media” that referred to Melanie’s alleged poll, either.

So, one is left to wonder, once again, just what the Hell is going on at KSFO. I suppose it’s possible that there was a poll in Melanie’s head, which stated that “more than 80% of America…”, but how the heck am I supposed to refute that? Or maybe KSFO picked up an inside scoop that nobody else was privy to – hey, it could happen!

I don’t know… But, I can assure you – if someone can point me to a specific, recent Gallup poll that accurately reflects Melanie’s statement, I’ll be more than happy to issue a retraction, and maybe even a real apology. Seriously. There’s no love lost between KSFO and myself, but I’d rather be accurate than ‘right’.

[Update] – I did find this, at FOX News

These are just some of the findings of the new national telephone poll of 900 registered voters conducted from June 27 to June 28 by Opinion Dynamics Corporation for FOX News. The poll has a 3-point error margin. [I couldn’t find a link to the actual poll, though. Can anyone point me to it?]

The Bush administration asked the New York Times not to publish information about the secret program, but the newspaper went ahead because it felt it was in the public interest to do so. By publishing the story, a 60 percent majority thinks the Times did more to help terrorist groups than the public (27 percent).

More Americans blame government employees for leaking the classified info (51 percent) than the media for reporting it (28 percent).

Furthermore, almost all (87 percent) think the employees who leaked should face criminal charges and two-thirds think the news organizations should. Even so, only 43 percent are willing to call what the media did treason, and almost as many think the organizations that published the information were operating for the public good (37 percent).

Note that more Americans blame the Gov’t. employees than the media, and less than 50% were willing to call the media’s actions ‘treason’.

You want to play Media Professional, Melanie? Act like a Media Professional, not an agenda-driven ideologue who ‘every day for four hours… sits behind a radio microphone’.

As I said – if someone can point me to the poll she’s citing, I’ll issue a retraction.